Chapter 68 - The Ghost of Arthur Vance
The men hesitated for a split second, looking back at Pastor Luke and my mother with nervous glances.
"Don't listen to her empty bluffs!" Clara snapped, her voice losing its pious cadence and turning sharp as broken glass.
"The sheriff is a deacon in our second parish, and he knows this land belongs to the church by divine right!"
I looked at the four men, men I had seen shaking hands at local diners, now reduced to foot soldiers for a sociopath.
They smelled the promise of free antique furniture, lakefront access, and the cheap high of righteous bullying.
My mind flashed back to the hospital room six months earlier, where grandfather Arthur lay breathing through an oxygen mask.
His hands had been calloused and weathered from decades of building the Blackwood estate from wild mountain wilderness.
He had grabbed my wrist with surprising strength, his grey eyes piercing straight into my soul.
"Riley, your mother doesn't want the house because she loves Blackwood," he had whispered through cracked lips.
"She wants it because beneath the foundation lies the paper trail that proves she stole every dime from your father’s life insurance."
"She will come with a crowd, Riley, because cowards only attack when they have an audience to applaud their cruelty."
"Promise me you won't cry, promise me you won't run, and promise me you will let her hang herself with her own greed."
I had made that promise, holding his cold hand until the monitor flatlined into a continuous tone.
Now, standing on the threshold of his masterwork, I felt his blood running through my veins like liquid iron.
"Clara, you forged that probate decree using a crooked notary in Pine Creek," I stated with absolute clarity, projecting my voice across the lawn.
The congregation went dead silent, the hymn dying in their throats as they looked between me and their immaculate leader.
Clara’s face went white beneath her thick foundation powder, but she recovered instantly with a venomous laugh.
"How dare you slander your mother in front of God’s anointed servant!" she screamed, her eyes bulging with genuine fury.
"Arthur was losing his mind in those final weeks, babbling nonsense and writing fake wills because of the morphine!"
"He wanted me to have Blackwood Lake, he begged me to forgive your sins, and he begged the church to take this land!"
"Is that why he revoked your power of attorney three years before he got sick?" I asked, pulling a laminated court document from behind my back.
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"Is that why he legally disowned you from the Vance family trust on the exact day you transferred fifty thousand dollars from his hospice account?"
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the cold lap of water against the docks below.
